The luminous works of Lubaina Himid, question harsh subjects
During the winter months, the MCBA in Lausanne is presenting an exhibition dedicated to Lubaina Himid, a contemporary artist born in Zanzibar and working in the United Kingdom. The show of the MCBA, made in collaboration with the Tate Modern, London present 70 works of the artist, including paintings, objects, poetic texts, and sound installations.
6 sections - 6 spaces - 6 subjects
The first section of the exhibition is dedicated to the link between the human figure and architecture. For the artist, the relationship to constructed space is deeply important, between a space needed to have a healthy life and poverty.
When you enter the exhibition, you encounter a recent series of paintings inserted into a curve wall. "Metal Handkerchief" from 2019 is a reference to the language of health and safety needed to constructed and used a building in its best way. To activate this series, the artist invited Magda Stawarska-Beavan to create a sound installation borrowing the words of the painting, thus creating an intimacy and a new way to describe the pictures.
Beside humans and theirs needs in their space, Lubaina Himid is also inspired by the working class. In "Three Architects" from 2019, the subjects are three architects at work, creating models in a brightly coloured structure, similar to Himid’s building paintings.
The structure of the space is made like an open space, where you can't really define the difference between the inside of the studio (made out of bright colours) and the small windows overlooking the sea. In a sense, the ocean or the sea open up to new possibilities and unknown projects.
The second section is dedicated to the theme of danger. By grouping a series of canvases and works on paper exploring the themes of the sea, the artist is playing with the patterns of the waves. In this room, the sea is the recurring motif in the oeuvre of Himid due to her two-month residency at Tate St Ives in Cornwall in the late 1990s.
During those two months, the artist produced a series called "Plan B", comprising of seventy works on paper made out of charcoal, pastel, collage, and paint. All of this inspired by her studio, in a small lifeguards’ hut overlooking the sea, looking at the shifting colors of the water and the sky.
In this series, the framing and the composition of the picture are deeply rooted around the sea, the opening from her hut and the contrast between the inside and the outside. The artist later quote: “How would you make sense of a place like the ocean, if you’ve never seen it before? How would you paint it?”.
The third section of the exhibition is dedicated to sound. With the installation produce for the WIELS – Centre d’art contemporain in Brussels, Himid as made an installation out of a wall installation (made with everyday object) and a sound recording coming from a text she wrote:
What does love sound like?
What does blue sound like?
What does the city sound like?
What does making sound like?
What is the sea and exactly how much water is there in it? What does this much water mean?
[...]
Songs have rhythms and melodies
Patterns have shapes and colors
We speak to each other; they speak to each other...
[...]
Learning to listen is the most important lesson I have learned during my life of speaking with artists.
Learning to listen intelligently, deeply and carefully to the world and to the narrative I use to interpret my life is the most important lesson I have learned during the past five years.
Thus, the installation titled "Blue Grid Test" made in three languages, English, Flemish, and French is questioning the link between the audio and the sixty-four blue patterns painted on object (presented around the installation). Thus, the whole is worked into a sound environment, creating a dialogue between the musical patterns suggesting the color blue (inspired by Joni Mitchell’s song “Blue”).
The second floor of the exhibition is more of less an open space, divided into three different spaces.
The first space is dedicated to strategy and political decisions. Thus, the entry comprises of a monumental sculpture titled "Old Boat/New Money" made in 2019, which entered in dialogue with 4-5 paintings referencing to a political or historical narrative. Some of those works are dealing with the issue of slavery, the link between the African continent and the American continent and the modernisation of pictures by Tissot or Cassat.
In all of those pictures, the people are interchanged with black women as the central figures of her paintings and as individuals in their own right. In most of the pictures, the two figures are having a dialogue, sometimes making plans, discussing or arguing in a situation or a decision.
The second section is dedicated to gathering and re-using, between the use of old works such as "Freedom and Change" (1984) and "A Fashionable Marriage" (1984-1986) and their presentation, made like a theatre stage. In those works, the materials are quite different from painting and canvas, but rather material which is given a new life such as canvas, cardboard, plywood, housepaint, collage, etc.
The final section of the exhibition is dedicated to Himid's latest works, made between 2019 and 2021. Thus, numerous imposing paintings are grouped together depending on their themes or their series: homosexual couple portraits, everyday scenes and personal stories from the artist.
The most striving picture in this selection might be a green and grey picture where four people are seated in an interior, on the opposed side, you can see a large window overlooking the sea. But what's strokes me in this picture is the density of the composition, between the yellow couch, the blue chair and the coloured shirt and pants of the figures.
The end of the exhibition doesn't really evoke the political or racial causes, but more or less the life of black people today, more peaceful then centuries ago, but still week due to racism...
Informations about the exhibitions
Place: MCBA
Date: 4.11.2022 – 5.2.2023
Curators: Michael Wellen & Nicole Schweizer
Ticket: Available the front desk of the museum
Informations about the MCBA
MCBA
Place de la Gare 16
1003 Lausanne
Suisse
Phone: + 41 21 31 84 400